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Iowa slaughterhouse manager faces charges

(AP) - Nearly a thousand new charges have been
filed in the state's prosecution of alleged child labor violations
at a kosher meatpacking plant in northeast Iowa.

The 954 new charges were filed Jan. 16 against Jeffrey Heasley,
a beef production supervisor at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in
Postville.

They include alleged child labor violations of employing
minors in a meatpacking establishment and for exposing minors to
dangerous or poisonous chemicals.

Last September, the Iowa attorney general's office filed more
than 9,000 charges against the plant, its owners and managers.
Heasley was not one of the managers charged at that time.

Prosecutors accuse the company of hiring minors and in some
cases of having children younger than 16 handle dangerous
equipment.

One affidavit in the case says that children were exposed to dry
ice and chlorine solutions and that children were operating
conveyor belts, meat grinders, circular saws, power washers and
power shears.

Heasley was scheduled to appear at a hearing Wednesday.

An attorney for Heasley was not listed in court documents, the
Allamakee County Clerk's Office said. A woman who answered the
telephone at the Agriprocessors plant said Heasley continues to
work there. A message left for him on Monday afternoon at the plant
wasn't immediately returned.

The other defendants include the company itself; plant owner
Abraham Aaron Rubashkin; his son Sholom Rubashkin, former CEO;
human resources manager Elizabeth Billmeyer; and human resource
employees Laura Althouse and Karina Freund.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Sholom Rubashkin can be
released from jail if he can post a $500,000 bond.

He has been in custody since November after agents found about
$20,000 in a tote bag in his bedroom, as well as passports and
birth certificates for some of his children. Agents alleged that
Rubashkin planned to flee.

Under terms of his release, Rubashkin would be required to wear
an electronic tracking device and must surrender his passport and
birth certificate.

Later in the day, prosecutors filed a motion indicating they
don't plan to appeal Rubashkin's release.

Agriprocessors - the nation's biggest kosher meatpacking plant -
was raided by immigration authorities last May 12. Nearly 400
people were arrested, most of them Guatemalan and Mexican
nationals.

The raid created turmoil in the small town as families faced
deportation. The company has filed for bankruptcy protection, and
the allegations of worker abuse prompted some Jews to call for a
certification program to protect workers and the environment in the
kosher food industry, which is already subject to strict dietary
laws.